Airport lines can be longest in March

Don't be surprised if you run into long lines at ticket counters, baggage claims and checkpoints at South Florida's three main airports this month.

March is the busiest month at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood and Palm Beach international airports, and the second busiest at Miami International, behind January. Lines can run close to an hour at peak times, generally before 9 a.m., between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., and between 9 and 10 p.m.

Blame tourists seeking nice weather, spring break and Passover celebrants for making March even busier than November and December, said Greg Meyer, spokesman for Fort Lauderdale airport.

"Thanksgiving and Christmas traffic is compressed into a short period," he said. "March is busy all month.''

Palm Beach handled about 136,000 more passengers in March 2012 than it did in December. Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood saw about 203,000 more passengers last March than December.

Sometimes bad weather adds to the crowding. That's what happened earlier this week, when airlines added two morning flights after being forced to cancel them the night before.

The result was lines flowing out of Terminal 1 at Fort Lauderdale, with hundreds of passengers waiting more than 50 minutes.

Cal Deal, of Fort Lauderdale, a graphic consultant, was one of them. He said if his AirTran flight to Atlanta hadn't been delayed 15 minutes, he would have missed it.

"It got a little tense," he said. "The question everyone had, did this happen because of the government sequester?"

Transportation Security Administration spokeswoman Sari Koshetz said the budget cuts had nothing to do with the jam. She said such problems occur about once a month because of airline scheduling problems.

Her advice: Get to the airport two hours early for domestic flights and three hours for international flights.